The University of Washington Bothell School of Business is proud to announce that we have recently become a signatory in PRME – Principles of Responsible Management Education, which was started in 2008 as part of the United Nations Compact. PRME’s goal is to further the understanding and implementation of sustainable business practices and our membership commits the business school to its Six Principles. Quoted below are the exercerpted principles from PRME's website.

Principle 1 | Purpose: We will develop the capabilities of students to be future generators of sustainable value for business and society at large and to work for an inclusive and sustainable global economy.

Principle 2 | Values: We will incorporate into our academic activities and curricula the values of global social responsibility as portrayed in international initiatives such as the United Nations Global Compact.

Principle 4 | Research: We will engage in conceptual and empirical research that advances our understanding about the role, dynamics, and impact of corporations in the creation of sustainable social, environmental and economic value.

Principle 5 | Partnership: We will interact with managers of business corporations to extend our knowledge of their challenges in meeting social and environmental responsibilities and to explore jointly effective approaches to meeting these challenges.

Principle 6 | Dialogue: We will facilitate and support dialog and debate among educators, students, business, government, consumers, media, civil society organizations and other interested groups and stakeholders on critical issues related to global social responsibility and sustainability.

Aligning Our Goals with PRME

As part of our application, we also summarized our activities and research completed to date that relates to the principles of PRME and these can be found in our school’s listing on PRME’s website.

These activities include the work Dr. Deanna Kennedy is doing to help to build a more culturally inclusive pedagogy of business education. She has coordinated the creation of a global repository of resources pertaining to operations management to facilitate the integration of gender issues into management education on behalf of PRME.

Our faculty is actively engaged in focused research and presentations that are related to the six principles of PRME, an example of which was Dr. Kevin Laverty’s presentation, “Sustainable Business: Oxymoron? Smokescreen? Or Strategic Imperative?”, which was given in the spring of 2012 at the campus-level Research in Progress Series.

Managers today are called upon to consider the global impact that business activities generate. Our future educational efforts and engagement with the regional business community will both further these six principles as well as show that our own organizational practices are a reflection of these same values.

A strong commitment to these six principles of PRME is an important step for our School of Business to helping to make sure that we promote sustainable practices and continue to inspire excellent in our students.

For questions related to PRME or about the School of Business' commmittment to the Six Principles, please contact Phil Palm.